Ryan graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Production & Engineering. For the last 4.5 years he’s been the Post-Production Audio Engineer on staff at Elevation Church, in Charlotte, NC, where he mixes their global TV show, and has many other responsibilities (boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, etc.).

You may have heard some of his work, as he sound-designed and mixed the opener video for the Circles conference for the past two years. He even had his own podcast for a short while (TheQueuecast.com).

I asked Ryan to come on the show to share his journey towards becoming a professional audio engineer (a job that I’ve always wanted), and to get him to share some tips for anyone interested in working in audio/video professionally.

Reading Cal Newport’s Deep Work book is one of the best investments I’ve ever made. The focus and clarity I got from that book is one of the best investments I’ve ever made. The focus and clarity I got from that book helped me produce two huge online courses this year while working full time as a podcast editor for seanwes, and it also helped me lose twenty pounds and get into the best shape of my life while training for an Ironman triathlon.

Put simply, Deep Work was a game changer for me.

This is the second part of my recent interview with Shawn Blanc where we talk about Deep Work and focus.

We also discussed pricing your online products (you can charge more than you think you can), how to create a morning routine that will supercharge your daily productivity, the power of choosing a single area of your life to improve on, and more.

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons.

Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions.

A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he’s learned about growing an audience.

Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he’s gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life.

In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires.

This week seanwes Community member Martine Ellis joins me to share her podcasting journey and how she created a detailed checklist to help streamline her podcast workflow.

We discuss how niching down can help you attract a dedicated audience and how to spend less time creating a podcast without sacrificing quality. We also walk through Martine’s 9 step podcast workflow checklist and discuss our favorite podcast tools and tricks.

I just got back from seanwes conference 2016, which was an amazing 3 day conference in Austin, Texas. I knew I wanted to record some audio interviews, so in this episode, I share how I planned for the conference, what gear I deciding to bring along, and some general tips and thoughts about attending a conference as a podcaster.

I’ve been watching an online audio mastering course (called DIY Mastering) from Jesse Cannon (a great audio engineer). In it, he was talking about how he always checks his work on cheap speakers and Apple earbuds, since that’s what most people use to listen to music.

It got me thinking: are expensive headphones really necessary for mixing podcasts? Do you really need the best gear to make great work, or are you just procrastinating?

My goal for this episode is to encourage you to do more with what you have and not fall into the trap of believing that better gear is the secret to success.

I got a question from a Community member about recording audio away from home, so I grabbed my Zoom H4N and a few mics and headed to a local Starbucks to test out the different mics in a real world setting.

If you’d like to invest in an affordable, portable recording setup, this episode will help you get started.